Ah right.. Stewart Downing

..
At 22yrs old he was playing in the Premier League and had 16 England Caps. Since then he has gained a further 19 caps (35 in total).
Over the past 14 seasons, he has been a Premier League player in 13 of those. The other, he played 45/46 Championship games.
Since the 03/04 season, he has chalked 396 Premier League games from a possible 494 (38 games in a season x 13 seasons) - ~80%
He may be in decline, he's 32. But a premier league player and ex-England international in decline is still a player that is better than our current players.
The Downing thread was in-keeping with the other ridiculous Player Suggestions that we get in the rumour mill. When it was first introduced, I stated it was a silly idea and still believe that to be true as you get people listing random players because they're good on Football Manager etc.
Many fans on this forum seem to bring in wages, signing on fees and agent fees etc. into discussions about players, this isn't really something we can judge them on. We can judge players on their ability and I know we would never realistically be able to afford Boyd or Downing, we're not at the stage to compete with these wages here, however, both Boyd and Downing would improve our squad at present.
Many fans seem to have put us on a pedestal now where these players apparently aren't good enough for a team coming up from the 3rd tier, yet high end 2nd tier teams and low-end premier teams are looking at them.. This is what I don't get.